Wednesday, February 26, 2014

Team BttF will soon have their third Back to the Future based project reach 10,000 supporters. The "Jules Verne" Train is based on the time traveling train seen at the end of the trilogy and it will be the first train design of any sort to reach 10,000.
This will be evaluated with the Lego Birds and Modular Apple Store in the review starting on May 5th. Ideally we will receive a production decision in early September, if Cuusoo sticks to its target goals.

The Back to the Future theme has recently gotten an injection of fresh blood with AFOL favorite Orion Pax coming to Cuusoo. He has already uploaded several projects including a range of models based on "2015."

Tuesday, February 25, 2014

Sometimes we have to turn down
project submissions that refer to specific brands or licensed
properties. We do this to avoid getting your hopes up for something we
know we aren't able to make. In these cases, we already know the LEGO
Group can't secure licensing rights to produce construction toys based
on a particular brand or property, due to a conflicting interest with a
third party.

If such a conflict goes away, we'll then be able to accept projects based on a particular brand or license.

The Fine Print:

If
your project was previously turned down, archived, or deleted due to a
licensing conflict that is now resolved, you may re-submit it as a new
project. Supporters from past projects cannot be applied to a future
project.

Resolved Past Licensing Conflicts

We now welcome projects based on the following licenses that used to have conflicts:

The really interesting thing, is that this means that Cuusoo set 007 has been revealed, and likely released before Exo-Suit, Cuusoo set 006. The posting does mention that Lego is working with Peter Reid on the model.

Tuesday, February 11, 2014

Open Letter to Project Creators Who Don't Support Projects

For those interested I have posted an open letter here to the small subset of Cuusoo creators who don't support other projects. This is not in any way a witch hunt, I am not naming names. I am just trying to give these people perspective on how these people are portraying themselves, which may are may not be accurate to their true nature.

Pick of the Week

I, at lest personally, give a lot of the modulars on Cuusoo grief for not showing their internals. I think a modular has to have both an impressive exterior and interior. Challenging the preconceptions of Lego architecture and design.

Klikstyle's The L. Rivendell Museum of Natural History, however, is so fresh and complex and compelling from the exterior that I would have selected this for my pick of the week without a single shot of the interiors (though they are quite impressive as well).

The "suspended atrium" is an epic feature: visually compelling and technically challenging. The color scheme of dark blue grey and nougat plays together excellently. The elements of the building avoid repetition with innovative brick use and appealing variations.

Despite my earlier comments, the interior is not to be missed. The "museum displays" are well thought out and showcase skill in small, clever design work as well.

All in all, an excellent build.

Honorable Mentions

This is a really marvelous ship! There are tons of little details all over that scream Sci-Fi. It has a really excellent "clean greeble" feel with all kinds of compelling geometries that really draw in serious Lego builders.

This is a very solid, really fun car. The car has a bit of bulk to it but it wears it really well. Additionally the hood, trunk, and doors all open. There is even a excellent motor under the hood that matches the design style of the rest of the build.

I just don't get it. You take a marvel of portability and then you put it in a really expensive, very large case. I always have some difficulty with "utilitarian Lego" projects.

I think this is an excellent MOC, a fun display, and a brilliantly orchestrated marketing ploy, but I can't wrap my brain around this for a product. More power to them certainly, but who is the market for this?

Think about it. This is by definition only for iPad owners, which, I grant you, is a large community, but still, it is a singular club. Then you need that special subset of iPad owners that are enamored enough the 84 Mac that they want to put their iPad in a stationary cube that mimics the look of it, all the while preventing charging, holding vertical, and one may assume, deadens the acoustics. On top of that this target audience further is willing to pay the extra expense of having the whole thing made of Lego instead of a single plastic shell.

The team did a wonderful job playing on the business aspect of their video, but that was about entertaining people. Marketing is another issue. I wish them great luck, I could be totally wrong, but like I said, I always find these utilitarian projects confusing.

Or "Gal" (I use "guy" genderlessly personally but people tend to correct me)

I have waffled about writing an article about this subject because it will probably make me sound like a bit of a snob but tonight I am, I guess feeling a bit on the snobby side.

If you post a project on Cuusoo and you have not supported any other projects, you look like an expletive. I am going to go ahead and give you the benefit of the doubt and say you are not an expletive, but you are certainly swimming like an expletive and quacking like an expletive, so the community is going to go ahead and think you are an expletive.

Friday, February 7, 2014

Apple Store Modular in the final Stretch

This is technically the second Apple store to do so but I find it difficult to really consider the Mini Store Series as a predecessor given how spread out it was. This is also only the second modular to have reached 10,000.

Minimum Time to Product

So, last Olympics there are a LOT of projects that came out based on, well, the London Olympics of 2012. This week a 2014 Sochi Olympics project got published. This does not just happen with these events but they are a good example of moments in time that are..well, locked in the past.

It is very difficult to market a product for an event that is in the past, you have to find people who care about it having happened enough to buy your merchandise and that is a tough sell.

Now movies are pretty much the same thing but you do have a few chances at a second grab. They go through phases. There is the build up to the premiere, the actual release, then a second wave of hype when the movie is distributed for personal performances (pay per view, downloads, etc...) and then you have a few fallow years until either sequels or nostalgia kick in.

Too often I see people create Cuusoo projects for a movie the days after theatrical release. Sure there is a lot of hype and excitement going on but if you will notice, the Lego movie premiered last night, but the toys hit the market a month ago.

Finally, I see lots of people comment on brand new Cuusoo projects using references to the current or quickly upcoming market. These comparisons often fail to accurately take into account the long delta between first supporter and first buyer.

Assuming a project gets to 10,000, lets take a look at some numbers for how long it takes to get to the shelves.

The Curiosity was reviled on June 14th 2013 and hit the market on January 1st 2014. That is 201 days. Lets round that up to 7 months.

The Reviews are currently scheduled to take approximately 4 months

After reaching 10,000 supporters, the wait can be from 0 to 4 months until the review starts.

So you can see, one could legitimately expect 11 to 15 months before a product is available. When you throw in the time it takes to get to 10,000, well, if you want to make a Rio 2016 Olympics set, you better get going.

Cuusoo's Load Time Issues

Cuusoo has been having some real issues handling their load recently. For that reason they have taken down the two processor intensive aspects of the site, the Real Time Feed (RTF) and the Activity Feed. Although this has disgruntled a few of the users, this is a pretty smart move on Cuusoo's part.

The feed is something that is fun to look at and keeps the super-fans engaged, but it is not an inherent function of the site. The Activity Feed facilitates communication between users but Cuusoo has tried to make clear that they are not a forum.

The core feature of Cuusoo is to allow people to vote on project ideas and though many projects are discovered via the RTF, which can reveal projects trending upward, most project supporters come to Cuusoo using direct links to projects.

With the heavy load functions disabled, the core responsibility of Cuusoo, to allow people to go to a project, create an account, and support a project are mostly unaffected by the current load problems.

The lack of the RTF has made if very difficult for the Cuusoo regulars to see what is really going on in Cuusoo. For those who need their fix, I can recommend the daily support tracker. It only updates once a day, so it is not a perfect solution, but it can give you a good feel on what has happened in the last 24 hours.

This one ain't going nowhere but I love it. I really like
Discworld. I had been thinking of doing something like this for a while
but could never get the sheep right so I never published it. Then bam,
one of my friends said, "Make the core of the sheep one stud wide, not
two" and everything fell into place.

I know that tiny literary vignettes are not taking over Cuusoo but I enjoy doing them.

Pick of the Week

I had no idea Dr. Claw had been exposed but apparently it was an action figure. So, if you are having a hard time picturing something in a build, do what Jalex did, homework. See if some of the conceptualizing has already been done for you.

I think the set is awesome but it does have two issues going against it. Brain is hard to pull off. Very decent model but it looks like Unikitty and K-9 had a kid. The other is the integrated gadgets of the Inspector. Those are incredibly difficult to pull of but integral to the character. the only one depicted in the set is the extending neck...but nothing is going to every attach to the top of the standard Lego fedora and nothing will come out of hands...

Honorable Mentions

Well done Reekardoo! This is probably my favorite Avatar project to date. I also see that you are timing well to ramp up for the sequels.

Really clever use of the three claws on the wings.

I keep waffling on how I feel about the head. I think it is an amazing job from the perspective of knowing how difficult it is to make a tiny Lego "monster" head look even a little bit organic, but I am not sure the Avatar community is going to feel the same way...and it is their vote that is really gong to count for getting this to 10k.